Shooting to kill needs no warning

Police have been given permission to shoot dead suspected suicide bombers without any verbal warning, the Guardian has learned.

The killing of an innocent Brazilian man in a London underground station on Friday has focused attention on new guidelines to defend against terror attacks.

Operation Kratos tactics say suicide bombers who are about to explode their devices can be shot in the head.

There is still confusion over whether Jean Charles de Menezes, who was shot eight times, received a verbal warning.

A police source has told the Guardian that there is no need for officers to verbally warn a suspect before opening fire.

The source said: "If the firearms team are reasonably certain the person is a suicide bomber then there is no need to issue any warning.

"Experience from other parts of the world shows that if a suicide bomber knows they are being followed by police, they will detonate."

Yesterday, Barbara Wilding, the chief constable of South Wales police and one of the architects of the shoot-to-kill policy, said old guidelines telling officers to fire at the upper chest were redundant in the face of the dangers posed by suicide bombers.

She told the BBC that criminal law still governed officers' actions: "We always have to be able to answer, have we used reasonable force in the light of intelligence of the situation and the risk?"

The Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Ian Blair, said there had been 250 incidents since the attacks when police thought they may have been dealing with a suicide bomber. And he indicated that on seven occasions police had been on the brink of acting.

"I know there have been 250 incidents since July 7 where we have considered whether we are seeing a suicide bomber," he said. "I know that when I last saw it there had been seven times when we have got as close to calling it as 'that' and we haven't."

Insiders say there may have been flaws in the operation that led to Mr De Menezes's shooting, which is being investigated by the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

There are questions about why the intelligence was so faulty and about the identification of Mr De Menezes as a target. The decision to let him run and get on a bus is also suspect, although it may have been taken in the hope of finding out who he might meet.

One officer said an examination of the intelligence used, the decision making and identification of the supposed suspect "may reduce the culpability [of the officer who fired] quite significantly".

Another senior Met insider said: "When the truth comes out it is going to be horrific."